Conversion drop-what to check?

People working in online industry frequently face challenges related to site conversion. Conversion can be defined differently for different portal based on the industry in which it operates and based on the goal of the portal. For ex... Goal of E-commerce is to sell product so for them conversion would Buyers/Total Visitors. In case of consumer internet which acts as intermediate between buyers and seller it would be Respondents (People who dropped inquiry)/Visitors. Whatever may be the definition every online portal works with certain goal and conversion is very critical for every site.

What affects the conversion?

Conversion of site get affected by various parameters such as

• Traffic composition: It is basically the quality of traffic every site get. Generally, majority of traffic comes from SEO, Direct, and SEM.

• Changes made to site: New features on being added to the site to make it more user friendly which many have positive or negative impact on your conversion

• Consumer behavior changes: It is basically the change in preference of the visitors coming to your site.

• Sentiments of People: External factors such as floods, climate, earth quake may affect the sentiments of people any they may become choosy for ex. Recent floods in Chennai has affected the real estate industry as people have now become very choosy in terms of locality.

How to identify the exact reason 

Identifying the exact reason for the drop and fixing it is very critical since it affect the business of the portal. The conversion can drop because of decrease in push from micro conversion to macro conversion.Here the list of exhaustive steps that can be taken to identify the reason behind it

1. Check the traffic composition:

Compare the traffic composition for the month against the previous month when the conversion was better. Is there a change in the traffic composition? Is the better quality traffic going down? In that case you need identify which one is going down. Is it SEO? Then check whether the traffic for competitors have also gone down. Is that the case then no reason to worry and it can be attributed to seasonal drop.

                                                     Has the traffic gone down only for your site?Yes.Then the reason for that case has to be identified as fixed. In case traffic composition has not changed then move on to step 2.

2. Check the Page conversion:

Every site has some critical pages such as home page, listing page, detail page, response page/Payment Page which most of visitors uses. There may be certain page which may be causing the drop in the conversion. In Google Analytic or other web analytic tools check whether to the conversion of certain pages has dropped compared to previous reason. In case yes, identify the features which have been launched on that page and check if it has impacted conversion. In case yes then fix them.

3. Consumer behavior changes: 

In case page conversion was not affected by new features then check whether user preference has changed over time from the available data. In case it has changed then work on the logic used to show the information to the user based on the changed behavior and it should help in improving the conversion

4. Sentiments changes: 

In this case, the user may not be willing to transact because of poor sentiment such things can be easily identified from external environment in this case not much in your hands .Wait for the sentiment to improve.

5.Changes in text of call to action button

The text which you show on your site also affects the conversion of your site.When call to action button text is changed it affect the CTR for the button and hence also the overall conversion.Ensure that you do the audit of your text.